


Rebuilding the Pieces

by StarAmongStones



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, Androids, F/M, Multi, Past Sexual Abuse, Sharing a Bed, it's very mild though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-07
Updated: 2014-02-07
Packaged: 2018-01-11 12:07:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1172876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarAmongStones/pseuds/StarAmongStones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scott had always held firm in the belief that, because each android was born human and had machinery added to them later, the robotics market as it stood was glorified slavery. Unfortunately, his opinion means nothing when his name is randomly drawn for a contest he didn't even know he had entered, and a Logic Yielding Daily Improvement Android - L.Y.D.I.A., for short - is suddenly at his disposal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rebuilding the Pieces

**Author's Note:**

> I really hope you, whoever you may be, like this! There is a gratuitous overuse of italics and time lapses, and it may more may not be heavily influenced by Almost Human, but I had a lot of fun writing it.

“And the winner of his or her very own Logic Yielding Daily Improvement Android is,” Chancellor Grey paused, most likely as an attempt to inject some excitement into the crowd of antsy, only vaguely interested freshmen before him, “Scott McCall!”

Polite applause broke out amongst the students currently sequestered in the cramped auditorium, but Scott stayed glued to his seat.

“Scott,” Stiles elbowed him, “that’s you, buddy.”

“No,” Scott shook his head, hunching down further into his seat.

“What do you mean, _no_?”

"I mean I didn't even know I had entered a contest in the first place," Scott muttered, head still ducked.

“Scott?” Chancellor Grey shielded his eyes to look out into the audience. “Is there a Scott McCall out there?”

Stiles shoved at his friend until he was forced to stand rather than fall into a heap on the questionably sticky floor.

“Stiles, I-“

“Have your tree-hugging freak-out later, Scotty,” Stiles rolled his eyes. “Everyone’s waiting for you.”

A quick glance around the room confirmed that all eyes were indeed on him. He took a puff of his inhaler at the realization. He really wasn’t used to being the center of attention.

“There he is!” the Chancellor practically sighed in relief. “Come on, young man. Come collect your L.Y.D.I.A.”

Scott finally made his way out of the aisle on shaky legs, distantly registering that people were still clapping. Granted, they were only clapping half-heartedly at this point, but still; Scott felt like it had been an obscene amount of time.

He was half-way down the aisle when he first locked eyes with L.Y.D.I.A. She gave him a disinterested once-over before turning her attention back to the Chancellor as he began listing her various attributes. Well, that was that, then.

“And she is equipped to follow any instructions. Within reason, of course,” Chancellor Grey winked when Scott finally joined him behind the podium. Scott felt sick. Before he could say anything, the Chancellor shook his hand, and asked, “Well, Mr. McCall, are you excited about your new android?”

“Well, I was really not expecting this,” Scott said after a moment, trying to stay polite. The way the Chancellor’s smile dimmed slightly and the way L.Y.D.I.A. snapped her gaze towards him once more indicated that he probably failed on that front.

Before he could properly feel bad about offending anyone, the Chancellor began ushering him off the stage with L.Y.D.I.A., claiming that _of course such a big honor would be simply overwhelming_ , and Scott’s reaction was _perfectly understandable_.

As Chancellor Grey’s speech was the last event of Freshman Orientation, he and L.Y.D.I.A. were ushered out the back doors, permitted to leave before the rush of his classmates to avoid their bombarding the android.

Scott took another puff from his inhaler.

* * *

The walk back to his dorm was quiet. And incredibly awkward. Not only was L.Y.D.I.A. inhumanly beautiful, she was…well, _inhuman_. Her strawberry blonde hair was curled in just a way that the tiny silver slivers – her connection to the Android Operations System – embedded in the skin between her temple and left eye were hardly noticeable if you weren’t looking too closely. Unfortunately, her good looks _did_ garner a lot of double-takes, furtive glances, and just outright gawking as she strutted down the middle of campus. Scott shuffled closer to her in reaction. She narrowed her eyes at the movement, but said nothing.

Once safely in his dorm, Scott wanted to just flop down on his bed and not move for three days. His mother raised him right, though, so he took a seat in his uncomfortable wooden desk chair and gestured towards the bed. “You can sit down, if you want.”

L.Y.D.I.A. sat primly on the edge of the mattress.

“Uh, listen,” Scott rubbed the back of his head, “I’m really sorry about this whole thing. For the record, I never wanted this.”

“Am I insufficient in some way?” L.Y.D.I.A. asked, one eyebrow raised.

“No!” Scott waved his hands in front of him. “Not at all. I just mean, you know, you in general.” When he could see L.Y.D.I.A. still didn’t understand what he was trying to say, he continued, “I don’t think androids are very humane.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t remember my humanity.”

Scott shook his head. “It really doesn’t.”

L.Y.D.I.A.’s brow furrowed slightly before it smoothed out again into a blank mask. “Okay, what does that mean for us?”

“Us?”

“Yes,” L.Y.D.I.A. said, clearly losing patience. “What would you have me do, since you don’t want me here, yet I’ve been assigned to you for the foreseeable future?”

Scott frowned. He actually hadn’t thought about that. “Well, I guess you’re free to go?”

This time L.Y.D.I.A. shook her head. “The AOS would track me in minutes when they figured it out.”

Scott opened his mouth to argue when Stiles burst into the room. “Dude! I am insanely jealous.”

“Sorry, man,” Scott watched his friend hop onto his bed uncomfortably close to L.Y.D.I.A. Her shoulders stiffen imperceptibly in response. “I, uh, I know you were really hoping to win.”

“It’s cool. I got a coupon book, so it all evened out,” he joked. Then, “Plus, it’s not like you won’t loan her to me, right?”

“Stiles, she’s not a thing to be passed around,” Scott chided lightly. L.Y.D.I.A. gave him a sharp, assessing look, but offered no comment of her own.  

“But, she kind of is. I mean, she is _completely_ at your disposal,” Stiles stressed the last few words, and wiggled his eyebrows so hard that it almost looked painful.

At Scott’s confused stare, Stiles sighed, “Dude, you cannot be this dense. You have a beautiful chick _right in front of you_. How are you not thinking about all the many possibilities this situation could bring?”

“What?” Scott asked. As the words sunk in, his eyes widened. “Do you mean, like, sexual things?”

Stiles flailed his arms in what Scott had learned over the years meant, “Yes, dumbass!”

“Stiles, we’ve talked about this,” Scott said, voice hard. The argument was very old, and one of the very few things the two disagreed on. Stiles thought androids were more robot than human, and as such garnered no more thoughts towards their emotional well-being than, say, a laptop. Scott had always held firm in the belief that, because each android was born human and had machinery added to them later, the robotics market as it stood was glorified slavery. As much as Scott hated to rehash their old argument, he felt the need to speak up against his friend’s opinion because L.Y.D.I.A. was still literally sitting between them, and he felt awful that Stiles was talking about her like she wasn’t even there.  

“Alright fine,” Stiles rolled his eyes petulantly. “I was feeling dudes tonight, anyway. You up for The Jungle later?”

“No thanks,” Scott smiled a little as a peace offering. Stiles clapped his shoulder, which meant he accepted.

* * *

“He wasn’t wrong, you know,” L.Y.D.I.A. said later, after Stiles had left for the night and the two settled on the couch to watch a movie.

“About what?”

“Being at your disposal,” she said matter-of-factly. “I am here for your use. So if you want me to do Stiles’ bidding as well, I will.”

Scott muted the TV as he turned towards L.Y.D.I.A. “Would you like that?”

“It’s not about what I like or not. It’s about what you like,” she replied, turning towards him as well.

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Downplay your options.”

“I don’t have options,” L.Y.D.I.A. said with a trace of bitterness. “My options are to obey your every command, or be shut down. And I’ve been…“

“Been what?” Scott asked gently when she offered nothing more.

L.Y.D.I.A. raised her chin defiantly before she answered. “I’ve been retired before. I refuse to go through that again.”

“Okay, hey,” Scott raised his hands in surrender, “no one is trying to get you shut down. But I also don’t want to give you orders.” After a pause, he asked, “Can we try something?”

 “Yes. We can try whatever _you_ _want_ ,” L.Y.D.I.A.’s said scornfully.

Scott’s lips twitched upwards. “Cool. Okay. I want you to tell me what you want to do in every situation. Especially if you don’t want to do it.”

L.Y.D.I.A. looked confused, so Scott pushed on, “I know you think you’re supposed to be my servant or something, but that makes me really uncomfortable because you’re still human underneath all that tech, right?”

“No,” L.Y.D.I.A. said immediately. A bit too quickly, like the idea what schooled into her, and not her own.

“I think,” Scott ignored her, “that you have emotions for a reason. If your creators wanted you to be completely subservient, they would have made you emotionless. Or out of actual steel.”

“There are many reasons a human host continues to be the most viable option for android production,” L.Y.D.I.A. said absently. Scott totally had her. At least a little.

“What do you say?” Scott asked after a beat. “You want to give this a shot? Weighing in on situations?”

L.Y.D.I.A. still looked skeptical, but she eventually hummed noncommittally and said, “We’ll see.”

* * *

“Scott,” Lydia snapped, “It’s not that hard. Focus.”

“Art History is not my thing. You know that,” Scott moaned.

“I know you haven’t actually tried to make it your _thing_ at all the past seventeen weeks,” Lydia huffed.

It was true; Scott hadn’t cared to put in much effort with his homework, and his essays were downright atrocious. Even he could tell that. He much preferred to spend time on his Physics homework because he was pretty sure he would declare the subject as his major at the end of the next semester if he liked the next two classes in the major track. It earned him an approving look from Lydia when he shared his plans with her, which was a rare and welcome sight.

The other thing that had distracted Scott from something as pointless as Art History – why he had let Stiles talk him into taking a class because it sounded easy he would never understand – was Lydia. She hadn’t felt comfortable branching away from Scott to make any new friends yet, ever doubtful that he was a benevolent _friend_ instead of a strict _owner_ , so the two had dinner together every night. And of course after dinner, they would head up to Scott’s – their dorm, he guessed – and inevitably continue whatever they had been discussing for hours on end.

It was during these nights that Scott started to see L.Y.D.I.A. the android as Lydia the girl. A girl who was taken from her parents from an obscenely young age, and forced into the android program. She couldn’t even remember who her biological parents were since she was forced to live with foster androids to learn the “trade.” A girl forced into a horrible situation with a self-entitled high school boy who used her and retired her when his parents bought him a newer model for his eighteenth birthday. A girl who was sharp, blunt, loyal, and strong.

A girl who was quickly becoming one of his best friends.

“How about,” Lydia tapped her finger against her lips in thought, “if you correctly identify twenty pieces of artwork in a row, I will do one favor for you.”

Scott could feel how goofy his smile probably looked, but he just didn’t care. Lydia had offered to do him a favor. As if she didn’t do everything for him already. It was the final confirmation he needed to actually believe she was telling him the truth when she agreed to do things like help him study for a final he was woefully unprepared for, or when he asked her to calculate the derivative of 23x for him. Lydia just rolled her eyes, but Scott caught the little twitch at the corner of her lips that meant she was enjoying their situation just as much as he was.

“Okay,” he nodded his head, a bit overzealous. “Twenty questions. How hard could it be?”

* * *

“Oh my God,” Scott groaned at two am. When he finally managed to answer the proper number of questions. “Never again. We are never doing something like that again.”

Lydia shrugged as she plugged her AOS charging cable into the wall. “Works for me. We’ll just have to study along the way instead of cramming.”

Scott snorted. Like that was ever going to happen.

“Okay, what do you want in return?” Lydia asked once she had settled onto her own standard-issue Android Operations bed, and Scott had settled into his own twin. Stiles was out at some party across campus, and probably wouldn’t be back that night because he was already done with his finals.

“Tell me your happiest memory,” Scott said immediately. As much as Lydia had opened up over the months, she had yet to tell him a memory that made her smile. Plus, it was always nice for everyone involved to think of nice things.

After a long pause, Lydia answered, “A couple of weeks ago, when you started bringing me grapefruit juice at dinner.”  

“That’s your happiest memory?” Scott face scrunched up in confusion. When Lydia didn’t answer, Scott’s first instinct was to throw on some jeans and track down every single person in Lydia’s life that had hurt her so much, but he settled for something he could actually accomplish. “Come here, please.”

“Why?”

Scott sat up to find Lydia sitting stock-still in the middle of her bed. His gut clenched at the tone she hadn’t used with him since their second week of cohabitation. He deliberately threw back the covers and stood next to his bed to show he didn’t mean what she obviously thought he meant. Then he explained, “Because I really want to hug you. You don’t have to do it if you’re uncomfortable, obviously.”

“I can’t remember the last time I hugged someone,” Lydia tilted her head as she thought it over. After a moment, she sprang nimbly from her bed, and walked straight into his arms.

Lydia was never shy about telling Scott of her impressive amount of sexual partners – she had employed a myriad of tactics to keep her “ex,” if you could call her abusive former employer an ex-boyfriend, from retiring her – so the fact that a hug was such a big deal broke his heart.

“Jackson didn’t like anyone else in his bed,” Lydia clarified, sounding utterly indifferent. Scott had learned over the semester, however, that the more indifferent Lydia sounded, the more painful the memory. “He would cuddle for about ten minutes at the most, and then kick me out to sleep in my own bed. Three bedrooms away.”

Scott squeezed her a bit tighter at her confession, and held on until his eyelids were closed more than they were open. When he moved to pull away, though, she held tight. With a little creative maneuvering, Scott managed to lay them both down on the bed without either of them having to let go for long. He drifted off to warm gusts of breath against his collarbone and an almost imperceptible metallic clicking noise.

* * *

“Scotty, my boy, kill me now because I’m pretty sure nothing is going to top last night.” Stiles said loudly. Scott heard their door shut, and a scuffle as Stiles did God knows what, before he felt Stiles wriggle under his unoccupied arm. Scott refused to open his eyes because, if his alarm clock hadn’t gone off yet, his eyes did not need to be open.

“You smell like a gallon of rum, Stilinski,” Lydia said disdainfully as she burrowed further into Scott’s side in the attempt to block out his smell.

“Ah, that would be because I had a fuckton to drink last night, milady,” Stiles nodded more than was strictly necessary. “And I totally got involved in an accidental orgy. Best. Night. Ever.”

“Okay, buddy,” Scott chuckled. “Glad you had a good time.”

After a pause, Lydia sighed, “I hate myself, but I have to know: how, exactly, could an orgy be accidental?”

“Oh, my dear, sweet, innocent-“

“Stilinski!” she snapped. “Tell the damn story.”

“Alright, fine. Ruin the magic. Well, basically Erica – who was in my Econ class; I’m pretty sure I mentioned her right? The one with the phenomenal rack? Anyway – she and her glorious boyfriend Boyd were in one of the bedrooms getting ready to get down to business-“

“Get down to business,” Lydia interjected quietly, and both she and Scott shook a little with repressed laughter.

“Yep,” Stiles continued, oblivious, “and then apparently Isaac walked in. You remember Isaac Lahey from high school, right?”

“Yeah,” Scott said, surprised. “I didn’t know he went here.”

“Sure does. And then long story short, I walked in while Boyd was three fingers deep in Isaac, who was eating Erica out like he was a starving man, and the next thing I knew it was two hours and three and a half orgasms later.”

“I refuse to ask this time,” Lydia said.

“Probably for the best,” Scott smiled down at her, finally blinking his eyes open tentatively.

Lydia propped her chin up on Scott’s chest to return his smile, but rolled away and off the bed a moment later. “Nope, I can’t do it. He smells awful, and I refuse to deal with it this early in the morning.” She followed her chord over to the wall to unplug.

“You want to go get some breakfast?” Scott asked as he began to gently disentangle himself from Stiles, who had clearly passed out by that point.

“More than anything,” Lydia said. “Let me just get dressed and we can – wow.”

Scott followed Lydia’s gaze down towards his shirt in confusion to find quite a sizable wet patch on his shoulder. “Oh, Stiles drools. Has for as long as I’ve known him.”

“But he was asleep for twenty seconds.”

“Yeah,” Scott smiled fondly at his friend.

* * *

They settled on a 24 hour diner about a block from their dorm. The backs of their hands brushed so often as they walked that about halfway there Lydia finally slipped her hand into his. She tried to huff and seem annoyed, but he could see the beginnings of a smile playing at the edge of her lips. It just made him grin all the harder.

“So after your final I was thinking-“ Lydia started once they were seated, but she was cut off when the waitress walked up to their table.

“Scott?”

“Allison,” Scott answered, startled. “I didn’t know you worked here.” He knew she had picked up a part-time job, but he didn’t know any of the details. They weren’t really close anymore.

“Yep,” she chuckled a little, “Living the glamorous life of a waitress in a college town.”

“Well,” Lydia interjected, “those shoes are certainly glamorous. Where did you get them?”

“Oh, my mom found them a while ago in a little boutique in the Alps,” Allison looked down at her shoes, flushed slightly with pleasure. Scott found himself thinking fondly of the times _he_ used to make her look like that. And wasn’t that new. Just a few months prior, he probably would have felt a pang of sadness at their break-up. He wondered when exactly that had changed.

“Please tell me you’ve been to _Das Loch in der Wand_ in Switzerland,” Lydia asked Allison before the two started chatting about clothing and stores Scott couldn’t even begin to recognize. He allowed himself to tune out, and found himself watching Lydia’s red lips move as she spoke. It must have just been because she mentioned wanting to transition from her usual pink shade of lipstick a few weeks back. He would have to remember to tell her it looked really good. Really…enticing? _Oh_.

He was falling for Lydia.

It made so much sense that he mentally slapped himself for not realizing it in the first place. Of course he would fall for this beautiful, intelligent, _capable_ girl he spent so much time with.

“Unless,” he distantly heard Allison say, “Scott, is that alright with you?”

Lydia stiffened slightly.

“What?” Scott asked, shaking out of his epiphany.

“I wanted to take Lydia with me to that new store downtown, but you looked really weird. Is that going to be a problem?”

“Oh,” Scott grinned in an attempt to ease the tension suddenly surrounding their table. “Not at all. As long as Lydia wants to, of course.”

Lydia narrowed her eyes, but turned back to Allison to say sweetly, “Call me; we’ll set it up.”

“Cool,” Allison smiled.

After she took their order and left, Lydia rounded on him. “Okay, what the hell was that?”

“Alright, I’m sorry I tuned out, but I’ve never even been to Canada before,” Scott slumped in his seat.

“What?” Lydia asked, but she sounded more confused than incredulous, so now Scott was confused.

“Aren’t you mad that I tuned out of your conversation?”

Lydia blinked. “No, I’m ma- confused as to why you’re suddenly not okay with me making my own friends.”

“What now?”

“That, just now-“ Lydia gestured to where Allison had been standing moments before, “you looked weird. And Allison had to ask your permission to spend time with me. Which is fine, I understand how the world works, but I thought…”

“No!” Scott said, horrified. He lowered his voice a bit when he noticed a few startled looks from the booths around theirs. “No, you misunderstood. I don’t think you need permission to spend time with people, and neither does Allison.”

“But then what was all that?” Lydia asked, only slightly placated.

“Allison is my ex-girlfriend,” Scott clarified, sighing in relief. “She agrees with me completely on the subject of androids, so she probably just wanted to make sure things wouldn’t get awkward between us.”

Lydia sat back. “Oh.”

“Lydia, I swear to god I will never control you in any way for as long as we know each other.”

“So does that mean you’re never going to make a move?” Lydia asked calmly.

“What?” Scott choked out, startled. How had she figured it out so quickly?

“Please,” Lydia rolled her eyes, “your eyes have been glued to me for weeks now. I know what it looks like when someone wants me.”

“I'm sorry, I-“ Scott cut himself off. How had she realized his feelings before him? And, given her history, the whole situation sucked. He felt awful. “Sorry.”

“So where does this leave us?”

Lydia took a sip of her water as he stared at the table, coming up with his answer. Finally, he asked, “Where would you like this to leave us?”

She tilted her head the side in confusion.

“Say the word, and I will never look at you again. Well, I will, because I really like being your friend, but I won’t look at you like _that_. If you still want to be friends. Obviously the last thing I want is for you to feel uncomfortable. I hope you know that by now.” She gave him a small smile at that, and he breathed out in relief. “I really am sorry. I didn’t realize I was looking at you in any different way until just now, actually.”

“Boys are so dumb,” Lydia rolled her eyes, but it had a distinct air of fondness that Scott couldn’t help but smile tentatively at. Then, “I’ve never done this before, you know.”

“Done what?”

“Dated.”

Scott tried, and failed, not to get his hopes up. “Okay.”

“So if we were to start dating – and I’m not saying we’re going to – you would just have to remember that my only knowledge of dating is theoretical.”

“Okay,” Scott nodded. “Whatever you want.”

“So you would be okay if nothing changed,” Lydia held his gaze, “if we never had sex.”

“Yes,” Scott said calmly. He knew this wasn’t her doubting him. At least he hoped. He realized that they had only known each other for a very short time, and she had _years_ of bad experiences weighing on her. He was just going to have to reassure her that he would not add to those experiences – on purpose, anyway – until she believed him.

After another long look, she shook her head. “I don’t get you sometimes.”

“Take as long as you need to figure me out.”

When she smiled, hopeful and open, he was powerless to do anything but grin helplessly back.

**Author's Note:**

> I feel the need to apologize for the very G-rated ending. I hope you're okay with settling for emotional porn instead because, given Lydia's background, I just could not get them to hook up. My brain refused.  
> Also, shout out to my best friend, who graciously agreed to beta for me. Without her, there would be spelling mistakes galore, the ending would not be half as long as it is now, and I would still be in the corner crying about how nothing I write ever turns out the way I envisioned (in a perfect world, this fic is 500k words long, and spans ten years, two kids, and a cat, in case anyone was wondering).


End file.
